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The telephone rings at six a.m., precisely.
She answers it, quietly, then turns around and regards his chest and shoulders, naked and angular above the covers, and thinks: I’ll let him sleep a little longer.
She pads over to the window, peels away the curtain and looks out into the day.
The city is bathed in grey light, the pale remnant of a bomber’s moon floating in a wash of pink, meekly retiring from its nightly duty of lighting up the spires and rooftops of blacked-out London for German eyes. No raids last night, though—mercifully.
His chest heaves gently, like a ship bobbing up and down beside the quay. She sees the morning light pick out this fold, that wrinkle, that dip, and longs to reach out and smooth them out.
She stands up again and opens the window, receiving the balmy wind on her face. The café across the street used to carry its melodies all the way up into their room, but it has been closed for weeks. London has become a ghost town, yet for all its quietness, it radiates a grim determination. It’s as if the whole city were raising its voice to shout, “To arms!”, a call that only one man—hers—feels compelled to answer.
He is sleeping now, but not for long, never for long. The city no longer protects him, or any of them. Instead, he protects it. She looks at his strong hands, one resting on the covers and one pillowed under his face, hands which, an hour from now, will be wrapped around the yoke, entrusted with the fate of other people. His strong, tender hands, whose real labours remain obscure to her. It makes her uneasy that this man, of all the millions of men in the country, is prepared to make this sacrifice, and to do it is willing to slip away from her arms, her caresses, her care—from herself. What was the point, she thinks, of nurturing him, loving him, if today might be the day they take him from me? Taken by death, or by hardship, or by victory, or by who knows what.
Maybe she does know, though.
It fell out of one of his pockets when she had folded up his uniform the night before, while he was in the bath. A photo, about twice the size of the miniature portrait she’d had made for him and sent along with her first letter when he had just begun his training. She’d picked it up and smoothed the creases, looking into the black-and-white face of a man staring directly into the camera. It wasn’t an official RAF portrait, like Jimmy’s standing on their mantelpiece, but rather a snapshot, like the one you might take in a train station in Paris or Vienna to register the flushed cheeks and glittering eyes that come with the excitement of travel, highlighted by the bland background. But this man had serious eyes, light grey in the brightness of the flash lighting. He was wearing a knit jumper with a high collar and a heavy-looking leather jacket. His lips were full, almost a pout, and his short hair had been combed back with grease, though a few rogue strands curling over his forehead betrayed that this was not its natural state. There was none of the excitement or spontaneity of a photo booth in his expression. She’d turned it over, looking for a name or a date, but the back was blank.
She’d searched the other pockets with something akin to frenzy, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she found her own portrait. She’d stared at her own grainy face, until she’d heard him stand up in the bath and the droplets running down his body plop into the water.
She knows his smiles, his desires, the ways in which he makes love. But she doesn’t know the terrors he feels when taking enemy fire or flying into a thunderstorm, or the exhilaration, the joy, the lonely impulse of delight he feels while surrounded by the clouds, riding the rush of adrenaline into a dogfight. She’d fallen for him as he looked the picture of a glamorous fighter ace, as if he’d been born to do it—he’d say he was—but now she finds she can barely prick through the surface of it. He doesn’t talk about these things—talks over them, rather, using expressions like “He nabbed me” or “They poured it on us”, as if it were all some strange initiation ritual, leaving them with small but significant markings. In the beginning, he’d tried to explain to her how his Spitfire, that pinnacle of combat aircraft, felt like it was built for him, moulded to his body; how that small, cramped cabin of glass and metal, still represented freedom and adventure.
But now, with the photograph of the man neatly tucked back into the pocket it had fallen out of, she wonders if his delight lies in loneliness after all. She has tried to tie him to her the only way she knows how: representing all that is good and sweet about England, about home and hearth, with flowers, music, the softness of her limbs, the fire of her love; but every time he leaves, these ties are snapped.
He opens his eyes.
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
“What’s the weather like?”
“I don’t know…”
He joins her at the window.
“It’s not that cold. Good. What’s the wind direction, d’you reckon?”
She doesn’t know why he asks her these things. It’s not that she doesn’t know, or that he doesn’t; it’s that it seems to her there is a far more pressing conversation they should be having. The questions rise to her lips, but tasting, as they do, bitter, like gall, she swallows them back down.
His eyes glide over the city, up to the smudge of moonlight in the righthand corner of the sky. She wraps her arms around him from behind, and he rests his hands loosely on hers. He prefers, she thinks, the embrace of metal and glass. She doesn’t know how she’d feel if he were an ordinary soldier, though reading about the events at Dunkirk in the papers, she’s happy he isn’t.
“What are you thinking about?”
She feels his chest heave with a deep breath, like someone who is about to jump naked into cold water. Whether or not the fog will lift? Or the man with the fog-coloured eyes?
She tries again.
“Aren’t you even a little sad to be leaving? How long will you be gone this time?”
It might be eight hours, or ten, or longer. Who knows? In an hour, he knows, he will be in the cockpit, feeling the thrumming of the engine vibrate through his body. Why would he be sad, when there are hills, villages, the very sea to conquer?
“Don’t you like being home?”
“Aye, I like it…”
She hopes he will turn around and kiss her, but he doesn’t. She knows he has already departed, and squeezes him a little tighter.
“You’ll get a tan, flying around in the sunshine all day.” The sky has begun to glow red above the horizon, the embers of a new day having been stirred up.
He laughs. “Yes.”
She extracts one arm from the embrace and lays her hand on his shoulder.
“You’re strong, Mr Collins, but do be careful.”
He smiles.
He dresses, and she watches as he pulls on the navy-coloured uniform, pretends not to notice that he feels around in his pockets for his lucky talisman. The more he puts on, the heavier he gets, the more she admires him. She fastens his tie herself and pulls his shoelaces tight, making sure that she is the one to repair the last fault in his armour. It makes her happy to know that everything is in place.
Even the photographs.
“You look very handsome. Is that for the Germans?”
He brushes away the blond lock that is eternally falling over his forehead, and grins. She looks over his tidy appearance carefully.
“Makes me feel young.”
“I’m jealous.” It slips out before she can help herself, but her tone is joking; he laughs again. It’s as though all his sorrows have been absorbed by the photograph in his pocket, like a strange Dorian Gray. She smiles bravely as he bends down to kiss her, thinking that he, too, seems to be blank on the other side—a part that is not for her to see.
He shuts the door behind him, the first steps of that day’s conquest of the air.
She stays behind. Sadly, she looks at the flowers, the books, their unmade bed, none of which can compete with the pair of eyes grey as the morning sky.